The security monitoring and alarm industry is well established in their practices of monitoring buildings in residential, commercial and industrial settings. They use wireline and wireless systems in which a plurality of sensors, cameras and audio monitors communicate over bi-directional links to an alarm panel, which itself communicates to a remote central control station, or monitoring service, via a wireless or wireline channel. The sensors, cameras and audio monitors are deployed in specific regions called zones that they monitor. There may be a one to many relationship between the cameras or audio monitors and the sensors. These sensors come in many varieties, such as motion, vibration, smoke or heat detectors. The wireline link is typically twisted pair copper wire or coaxial cable; the wireless link is in the 800 MHz, 900 MHz or 2.4 GHz range. The alarm panel communicates with a remote central control station using methods such as wireless and cellular links, traditional Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) over the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN).
For both professional and private security systems the exclusive use of wireless networks and PSTN have limitations. In the case of wireless networks the user may be out of range of the serviceable area, but chances are there would still be Internet or PSTN access. Using the PSTN may result in expensive long distance charges if the call placed by the security system is out of the local toll area. Routing the call across the Internet backbone can save significantly on the cost of the call. When the security system notifies a monitoring service, the use of the PSTN for alarm delivery has a significant infrastructure cost associated with it. If the call center for a monitoring service is servicing a large client base, there will be excessive infrastructure cost associated with renting high-speed digital PSTN connections, like T1/E1 or T3/E3. Further costs include a PBX, wiring, BIX wiring cabinet and from time to time restructuring costs. A call center enabled to receive IP communications can significantly reduce this cost by employing IP phones, an Ethernet hub, a single LAN and high-speed Internet connections. As an example, a single 640 kbps DSL or Cable modem connection can theoretically handle up to 10 simultaneous VoIP calls on a single twisted pair wire. In fact, it is common to find DSL and Cable modems that have a down stream data rate of between 6-7 Mbps. This translates into a single modem at a call center handling up to 100 VoIP calls.
In current systems a new alarm panel capable of communication across a broadband connection is required because existing alarm panels have been designed for analog communications. While the saving for the monitoring service in switching to IP is great, the cost of installing new alarm panels at monitored sites is prohibitive.